August 22, 2008

A Truly Vicious Hit Piece

This is one of the more vicious hit pieces on Obama I have seen - a timeline of his "career". Geez, look at all the empty boxes punctuated by the occasional speech or new book about Obama. Let's elect him President quickly so he has something to put on his resume and can write another book about himself.

YOU SEE RIGHT THROUGH ME: OK, I 'fess up - seeing Obama as Director of the Developing Communities Project from 1985 to 1988 is not news to me but it graphically illustrates the point I have been making about his initial alliance with Thomas and Bill Ayers in the ABCs coalition back in 1987. Note the Developing Communities Project as a member of the ABCs coalition coordinated by Bill Ayers. The goal was public school reform, just as with the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, but Ayers did not simply pick Obama's name out of a hat when Obama was made chairman of the Challenge back in 1995 - Ayers had known him for years.

During the months of May and June 1988, ABC'S carried out a legislative strategy that one Republican legislator called "the most effective grassroots lobbying campaign I have ever seen.

School would not start for Obama at Harvard until late August or September. However, per "Dreams From My Father" (p 290) we see that Barack planned to leave his directorship at the Developing Communities Project in May of 1998. But on p. 289 he tells us that

"The months passed at a breathless pace, with constant reminders of all the things left undone. We worked with a citywide coalition in support of school reform."

I doubt the ABC's Coalition sprang into being in June 1988 and pulled off such an effective grassroots operation. Per this detailed history (p. 20) the ABCs Coalition formed in March of 1988. More background:

A bitter month-long school strike disrupted the opening of school in
fall 1987, spurring parent and community groups to demand not only an
end to the school strike, but also radical change in how the school
system operated. After the strike was settled, Mayor Harold Washington
convened an Education Summit that included many CURE supporters, along
with business leaders sympathetic to radical decentralization.

The
Education Summit spawned the broader Alliance for Better Chicago
Schools (known as the ABC’S Coalition) and brought together parent,
community, and business leaders around a common reform agenda. The
reform movement now comprised Chicago grassroots activists from every
racial and ethnic background and virtually every Chicago neighborhood,
including both multi-issue community organizations and groups that
focused solely on school reform.

Washington died in November 1987; this account says the ABC's Coalition formed in "the middle" of 1988:

Mayor Washington revived the summit
process, but died shortly afterward. By the middle of 1988 it became
clear to Chicago business that Washington's summit was not going to
produce the kind of changes that they felt needed to be made. Three
summit subgroups were preparing legislation to be considered in
Springfield. Chicago United responded by forming a business/community
advocacy coalition called the Alliance for Better Chicago Schools (ABCs
Coalition). The goal of this coalition was to draft a consensus school
reform bill.

The proposal hammered out at the summit was presented at the end of March 1998 and went nowhere, apparently. The timing is certainly close enough that an enterprising reporter ought to ask for a clarification from the Obama campaign. As if.

Few members of the school reform movement can say for certain when it
was that they first met Ayers. It was as though one day they looked and
he was there. That
would have been late 1987, in the aftermath of a debilitating 21-day
teacher strike that enraged parents and inspired them to demand
immediate change. By then Ayers had moved to Hyde Park and was working at UIC.
"I
arrived just as the movement was picking up," says Ayers. "I was
immediately intrigued. I started attending different meetings. I
couldn't stay away." Some
of his new allies knew nothing about his background; those who did
didn't care. He was friendly and personable. He was liked by virtually
everyone he met.

...It was at Sabin that he met Lourdes Monteagudo, then the school's
principal. On the south side he met Coretta McFerren, leader of a group
called the People's Coalition for Educational Reform. "I
love Bill; I truly think of him as my brother," says McFerren. "I don't
agree with everything he says. ...McFerren
and others invited Ayers to meetings of the Alliance for Better Chicago
Schools, a coalition that includes members of Hispanic, business,
black, and civic organizations. He started attending the group's
monthly meetings, held over breakfasts of eggs, sausage, rolls, fruit,
and coffee in a conference room on the 57th floor of First National
Bank's downtown headquarters. In
many ways, Ayers's philosophy was ideal for ABCs. The targets of his
criticism--central office bureaucrats and ineffective classroom
teachers--were not members of the coalition. For ABCs' members he had
almost nothing but praise. Within a few weeks, the group named Ayers convener, which means he runs their meetings.
"He
plays a good role because he listens to what everyone is saying," says
Laurie Glenn, a member of the coalition. "That's important with a group
like ABCs, which has so many divergent interests and so many members
who want to talk." "If
necessary, I'll let everyone talk until they are exhausted," Ayers
adds. "The meetings go on a little long, but it doesn't matter so long
as people feel they've had their say."

Can anyone muster a date out of that? Let's say that Bil Ayers may well have been chairing meetings by April or May of 1988, leaving plenty of time for him to have met Barack.

Comments

That IS vicious, TM.

I think you're right about how far back his alliance with Ayres goes, but I am a bit reluctant to go there because unlike the CAC project, the details of their work together then is still vague and because the point that he lied about his relationship with Ayres is obvious even if their actual working relationship only goes to early 1995, doesn't it?

Earlier today I stumbled across an article written by BHO that first appeared in the August/September 1988 Illinois Issues, published by University of Illinois at Springfield. The article is titled "Why Organize? Problems and Promise in the Inner City". Apparently it was added as a chapter in the book: After Alinsky: Community Organizing in Illinois .

In the article you can see why he chose to set up his community organizing shop in Chicago, and his motivation for attending Trinity Church. You have to read into it, but it could be said that it is a hint of his road map to the big house.

After first trying Amazon with no success, I googled the 'After Alinsky' book. It lead me back to Amazon where I found 4 copies available. The price for the 4 copies, all in paperback, ranged from $90 to $181. In college I paid $0.50 for 'The Communist Manifesto', but that is as high as my budget goes for progressive literature.

..during the period Barack Obama worked as a community organizer with the Developing Communities Project on the far South Side of Chicago (1985-1988), he was also a consultant and trainer for the Gamaliel Foundation.

LOL. Lester Holt just cut in on late night Olympic coverage. The Olympic host cut in on Holt, then stumbled half way through a couple of different sentences before saying "We'll be back in a moment." My only question is when and if the cell people got their text messages. Holt is back, so I'll be back in a moment.

“There has been no harsher critic of Barack Obama’s lack of experience than Joe Biden. Biden has denounced Barack Obama’s poor foreign policy judgment and has strongly argued in his own words what Americans are quickly realizing – that Barack Obama is not ready to be president,” McCain spokesman Ben Porritt said in a statement.

So Jimmy Carter, Al Gore, and John Kerry have all been added to the Democratic Convention speaker roster. That's a reasonably impressive booking - fully 60% of the party's Presidential losers from the last 30 years.

The equivalent Republican field is limited to Bush 41 and Bob Dole, but so far as I know, the RNC hasn't managed to book either one for their convention.

A senior Obama adviser, speaking on condition of anonymity, said his boss has expressed impatience with what he calls a "reverence" inside his campaign for his message of change and new politics. In other words, Obama is willing — even eager — to risk what got him this far if it gets him to the White House.

That's just the tail end. He is going to throw his whole hopey/changey message under the bus. Good grief.

It's a bright early October morning on Capitol Hill. Joe Biden is bounding up the steps of the Russell Senate Office Building, wearing his trademark grin. As he makes for the door, he is met by a group of airline pilots and flight attendants looking vaguely heroic in their navy-blue uniforms and wing-shaped pins. A blandly handsome man in a pilot's cap steps forward and asks Biden to help pass emergency benefits for laid-off airline workers. Biden nods as the men and women cluster around him with fawning smiles. Then he speaks. "I hope you will support my work on Amtrak as much as I have supported you," he begins. (Biden rides Amtrak to work every day and is obsessed with the railroad.) "If not, I will screw you badly."
A dozen faces fall in unison as Biden lectures on. "You've not been good to me. You're also damn selfish. You better listen to me..." It goes on like this for a couple of minutes. Strangely, Biden keeps grinning--even fraternally slapping the stunned man's shoulder a couple of times. When we finally head into the building, Biden's communications director, Norm Kurz, turns to me. "What you just witnessed is classic Senator Biden."
Meet the current chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and the Democratic Party's de facto spokesman on the war against terrorism. No other Democrat has been as visible in the weeks since September 11, and Biden, who began promoting himself almost immediately after the attacks, is likely to speak, for the foreseeable future, for a party lacking in foreign policy experts. That's good news for a man who is thinking seriously about running for president in 2004. But is it good for the Democratic Party? Biden is tough and he's an internationalist. Unfortunately he's also legendary for speaking impulsively and leaving others to clean up the mess. "He lacks the filter," says one Democratic strategist. Or as a senior Senate foreign policy aide put it: "Biden is an unguided missile." Not exactly the persona you want out front when the country is at war.

Apologies if this has been brought up, but wasn't Biden the source of the "beyond the pay grade" line, although in his case he was applying it to Scott Ritter back before he jumped the shark? What a wordsmith!!

Poor reference there, Leo; McCain is hardly monomaniacal. However, I'm sure the two have been dueling for decades; if it works, it's an inspired choice. But, I don't think it will. Taking the spotlight off Obama isn't going to help when the ships hit the sand. Obama is as fragile as glass, right now, and if it weren't earthshaking to do it, I think he'd be replaced.
==================================

clarice, the Stanley Kurtz blog opens up the line of thought that there could be significant benefits to an Obama presidency: the patent radicalism of Barry and la Michelle would very possibly blow the Democratic Party sky high in so short a time that there would be no danger of enacting any of their radical schemes.

The countervailing consideration is that in the current international climate there would be an advantage to having a president who agreed with the last person he spoke to (as opposed to one who's ideas are set in stone): there would be a chance that that last person from his circle of advisers might speak sense to him.

I'm not into the make an omelet by breaking eggs group..I'd like to see the Dem party blowup and reform because they take another Dukakis type pasting this time around and then if they stay on this disastrous course we know they need a collective shrink.

A lot of harm can happen in four years with creeps like this at the helm AND with a Congress of the same party.

Speaking of that AT has a blog today on some funny business re DC property between the Pelosis and Seagrams.

"seeing Obama as Director of the Developing Communities Project from 1985 to 1988 "

Well I read some more of TM's old links on ABC. I'm not so sure how strong the case is there. I didn't see specifically what role Ayers had in that ABC coalition yet, other than he was a "coordinator". Did he start it, did he pick the group leaders? Also there was at least 12 groups with multiple subdivisions. So Obama would have been one of 12 group leaders and of more if you include the subdivision. Still, they would have at least known each others names and knew OF each other, for sure. Whether they actually met, hard to prove.

Obama said Ayers was just a guy in the neighborhood."Our kids went to the same schools".Obama s kids are 4 and 9 now.In the eihties and nineties Obama didn t have any kids.Another briliant sophistry and sleight of hand?